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Global warming reveals mammoth find

Boy's own adventure ... the carcass of a mammoth that was discovered by an 11-year-old. Photo: AFP

THERE was an unpleasant smell and something sticking out of the ground. The 11-year-old boy from a nomadic family in Russia's north had stumbled upon a massive, well-preserved woolly mammoth, in what scientists describe as the best such discovery since 1901.

As global warming has thawed ground in northern Russia that is usually permanently frozen, a variety of mammoth remains have been uncovered.

But researchers say this is the best-preserved one ever found. Yevgeny Salinder, whose family lives near a polar station on the Taimyr Peninsula, discovered the frozen prehistoric animal when he was walking along the banks of the Yenisei River in late August.

''It is the mammoth of the century,'' Alexei Tikhonov, of the Zoological Museum in St Petersburg, said.